


Go Forth, Young Man

by nagi_schwarz



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 12:53:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14977562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Age is the hardest characteristic to predict in an unsub. Gideon's BAU team isn't sure what to make of Jonathan D. Murray, caught red-handed (black-handed) at the scene of Senator Kinsey's murder, because he's too young to be the killer they're after. Or so they think.Pre-series Criminal Minds. Season 7/8 of SG-1.





	Go Forth, Young Man

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to the phenomenal Brumeier and SherlockianSyndromes for their support and assistance in getting this fic across the finish line.

“This is impossible,” Morgan said.

Gideon, Hotch, and Reid stood beside him in the observation bay of the interrogation room.

“Age is the hardest characteristic to predict,” Reid said.

JJ stood beside them as well, arms crossed over her chest. “But - look at him. He’s just a boy.”

The boy on the other side of the glass, sprawled in the cheap metal chair at the interrogation table, looked like he was all of sixteen. He was narrow in the shoulders, his face still smooth. He had bright dark eyes, short brown hair, and a cocky grin. He looked totally unconcerned about the fact that he was being held by the FBI in an interrogation room at a local police station.

“It’s not the innocence of his face that’s the confusing part,” Gideon said. “The worst of killers can look like the sweetest of angels. No - it’s the experience this killer has to have, that this boy can’t have.”

Hotch’s expression was pinched. “Whoever is committing these murders has military training.”

“Could he have learned it from an older male relative or mentor?” Morgan asked. 

“According to his record, his parents died when he was ten years old, and he never stayed in one foster home long enough to ever form the kind of relationship where that kind of training could be imparted,” Gideon said. 

Hotch nodded his agreement. “The kind of military training required to plan and commit these murders isn’t the kind of thing a young man could learn from old military manuals. We’re talking extensive special operative training.”

“Some of the tactics speak to historical conflicts like Vietnam and the Gulf War,” Reid said. 

“You think he had multiple teachers?” Hotch asked.

“It’s literally impossible for a boy this young to have all the skills to commit the murders we’re investigating.” Gideon shook his head.

Young Jon D. Murray was rocking back on the back two legs of his chair, balanced precariously, amusing himself by the potential peril of falling. He looked as carefree as any other child.

“And yet we caught him red-handed,” Hotch said.

“Black-handed, you mean,” Reid said.

Hotch nodded, frowning.

“Think he’s a patsy?” Morgan asked.

“He’s awfully calm for someone who’s been accused of murder.” Reid sipped his coffee and stared at Jon, who was whistling a familiar tune. “Flower Duet.”

“What?” Morgan glanced at him.

“The song he’s whistling,” Gideon said.

“Unusual taste in music, for such a young person,” Hotch said.

“What do we do?” JJ asked. “He’s been emancipated. No one’s looking for him. No one misses him. No one cares about him.”

“We find the real killer,” Gideon said. “And we keep an eye on him.”

*

Dean wasn’t surprised when guards woke him up in the middle of the night, told him he was being transferred. Given that he’d pretty much expected to spend the rest of his mortal existence memorizing the inside of a cell at Fort Leavenworth, he wasn’t too worried when he was transferred. Usually it was just to another cell or another block, to accommodate incoming prisoners. Given the nature of his former security clearance and what he had locked away in his head - about stargates and alien planets and technology - he was technically a high-profile prisoner, but he wasn’t the same threat level as some of the other true psychopaths who’d walked the cement halls.

Dean had graduated from Annapolis top of his class, been picked for Maybourne’s operation for a reason, because he was good enough to rate being on a gate team, even if he hadn’t passed the unspoken, arbitrary standards of the SGC set by Hammond and O’Neill (but for a while there he’d thought he’d been good enough for O’Neill). He had the skills to be a threat.

But he couldn’t be bothered to be one. Not when being obedient and compliant earned him a fairly comfortable existence, all things being considered.

So when the guards woke him in the middle of the night again - third time they’d done that, usually not to annoy him but because the incoming inmate was pretty high profile, like a JSOC guy who’d gone janissary or something - he didn’t argue or complain, just shackled up, shuffled out of his cell, went along with them.

They loaded him into an MP jeep - again, not unfamiliar - and he kept quiet, didn’t try for any witty banter.

The jeep’s doors closed, and it started to roll forward.

There was a screeching of tires, an explosion.

The MPs poured out of the jeep to respond.

Dean didn’t try to go after them, because he had no idea what the situation was outside. He could try to escape and end up running into a frontal assault. There was automatic rifle fire outside, and he ducked instinctively. Then a uniformed MP climbed into the front seat, barked at him to hold on, and began to drive. Dean couldn’t see outside the jeep - the windows were blacked out so he couldn’t case the place - but he got the sense that it had been parked askew when it finally stopped. 

Then the MP hopped into the backseat with him. Paused. Looked at him.

Dean was shocked. The guy wasn’t a real MP at all - he was a  _ kid. _ Face smooth. Fifteen, sixteen at the most. Kid had a couple of zits.

But his dark eyes were bright, intense.

“Newman,” he said, with a certain wry turn to his voice.

A Seinfeld joke. Like Dean had never heard that before. 

Only something about the way this kid said it was familiar.

The kid reached out, unlocked his cuffs. He had a key.

“Where did you get that?”

The kid grinned. “I’ve got skills. You want to blow this popsicle stand or what?” He pushed one of the doors open.

“Who  _ are _ you?” Dean asked, but he followed the kid.

The kid was short, still narrow in the shoulders, lean. Dean could take him. He glanced over his shoulder and grinned.

“We have met, briefly. In a hangar at a Utah landing strip.”

Dean stopped short. “O’Neill?”

“Kinda,” the kid said. “Now come on.”

Dean followed him, confused and a little dazed. This  _ kid _ was O’Neill? Sure, Dean had read the mission reports, like when O’Neill became really old and almost got turned into a caveman and once swapped bodies with Teal’c. At Stargate Command, anything was possible.

The kid led Dean through a series of back alleys and byways to a fence with a hole cut in it, scrambled through the hole, and out to a parked car. In the car he had fresh clothes for Dean to change into.

The kid had  _ planned _ on breaking Dean out, as evidenced by the fact that the clothes were in Dean’s sizes.

“I’ll drive - for now,” the kid said. “Lay down in the back seat. But I’m not old enough for a real license yet, so till then you’ll need to take the wheel.”

Dean curled up in the wheel well in the back, obedient, because for all that the kid’s voice wasn’t fully broken, he had a commanding officer’s tone. Still, this entire situation was bizarre.

“Because a wanted felon will be in so much less trouble if we get pulled over.”

“We’re less likely to get pulled over because you look like you should have a license,” the kid said. “Let me get past the roadblocks and then you can take the wheel.”

Dean understood the command for silence and stillness for what it was. He ducked his head down and listened to the rumble of the engine. The kid had picked a dark, late-model sedan, nothing too fancy, nothing that would stand out. He drove calm and steady, not too fast.

They must have cleared the roadblocks, because the car slowed, and the sound of the road beneath it changed. Gravel. The shoulder. The kid was pulling over. 

“All right. You’re up.”

Dean crawled into the driver’s seat, buckled himself in.

The kid was sprawled in the passenger seat. He wore all dark clothes, combat boots, a familiar black knit watch cap. Dean could see how, in a few decades, this kid might look like Jack O’Neill.

“Jack O’Neill would never break me out of Leavenworth. He  _ put _ me there.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not the real deal. Drive.”

“Not till you tell me what’s going on.”

“A rogue Asgard kidnapped the Old Guy, tried to clone him for research purposes.”

That made sense. Dean knew the Asgard relied on cloning technology to keep their race alive.

The kid kept on talking, staring straight out the windshield. His posture was open, casual, cocky, but his tone was clipped, tense. “He messed up with the Xerox machine, and I came out fifteen. Got fifty-one years’ worth of memories in here, though.”

Not just memories. Training. The kid had broken Dean  _ out of Leavenworth. _

“What do you want me for?” Dean started the engine.

The key was on a little novelty keyring of the Statue of Liberty.

“Your goal was to keep Earth safe by whatever means necessary, right?”

Dean nodded.

“Well, I’m not a real person, and the SGC has forgotten about you, would rather never think about you,” the kid said. “I don’t exist, and for all intents and purposes, neither do you. And if they catch you, well, what’s going to be different for you then than the last few years have been?”

Dean eyed him. “What are you saying?”

“We’re going to protect Earth and the SGC by whatever means necessary,” the kid said. “Now drive. We have to lay low for a while, till we make our next move.”

“Which is?”

“Need to know.”

“I could just walk away from you,” Dean said.

“You could,” the kid said, “but you won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because,” the kid said, “you miss it too.”

Dean really, really did.

*

“This makes no sense,” Garcia said.

She was on speaker on Morgan’s phone, which he’d laid in the middle of the table in the conference room at the local precinct that they’d been given as a war room.

“What’s wrong, babydoll?” Morgan asked.

“We ran young Mr. Murray’s prints - and came up with Colonel Jonathan J. O’Neill, born October 10, 1952,” Garcia said.

The team exchanged looks.

“That’s impossible.” Reid had his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his posture defensive, tense. “Not even twins have matching fingerprints. Fingerprints are formed as a result of fetal development in the womb. They’re not genetic. Even if this boy were somehow a genetic clone of Colonel O’Neill, he’d have different fingerprints as a result of separate gestation.”

Hotch sighed. “The unsub never left DNA at any crime scenes. We can’t run a DNA check.”

Satori lit in Reid’s eyes. “A couple of years ago, then-Colonel Jack O’Neill was framed for the attempted assassination of Senator Robert -”

“Kinsey.” Gideon’s expression was grave.

Senator Kinsey was the most recent - and most high-profile - of the unsub’s victims. He’d been tortured and then killed. His torture had the earmarks of the kind of torture POWs suffered during the Gulf War. His execution had all the earmarks of a Vietnam-era execution of captured Viet Cong.

“Colonel O’Neill was publicly exonerated - by Kinsey himself,” Reid said. “Made for good publicity for his presidential campaign.”

“You think O’Neill’s exoneration was wrong but someone in the Air Force strong-armed Kinsey into doing it after they messed with O’Neill’s file and put the kid’s fingerprints in his place?” Morgan raised his eyebrows.

“Not sure how that would be possible,” Garcia said. “I’m not showing any records anywhere that Jonathan Murray ever had his fingerprints taken. Not even for one of those protect-your-kids things.”

“If the military stole his fingerprints to rescue an officer from assassination charges, they’d wipe out any prior records of his fingerprints being taken,” Morgan said.

Gideon shook his head. “Hoofbeats and zebras. We’re over-complicating things.”

“It can’t be a coincidence that the unsub’s victim is the same man O’Neill was accused of killing,” Reid said.

“You think the unsub is trying to frame O’Neill?” Garcia asked.

“Find out what you can,” Hotch said. 

Reid asked, “What did you get on that black copy toner?”

“That I did get a match on,” Garcia said. “Same stuff as was found at all the other crime scenes. Same manufacturer, likely from the same batch, but you can find it at any office supply store, so I don’t know how helpful that is.”

“Thank you. Call us back when you know more about O’Neill.” Hotch nodded and Morgan ended the call.

“The copy toner is significant.” Gideon turned, looked at the photo of Jon Murray tacked to the corkboard serving as their data center. 

Hotch made a wordless sound of agreement.

“It’s some kind of signature,” Reid offered. “But what does it mean?”

“Maybe we’ll figure that out once we know what all the victims have in common,” Morgan said. “We’ll need to wait on Garcia for that.”

“In the meantime,” Gideon said, “Reid, I’d like you to have a chat with our young suspect. He didn’t seem amused when I referred to you as  _ doctor, _ wasn’t disdainful. You’re also closest to his age. You have the best chance of establishing rapport with him.”

Reid tucked a lock of hair behind his ear, a bit of a nervous gesture. But he said, “All right.”

He trusted Gideon implicitly. Gideon still wasn’t sure where he’d come by that, given how few other men in his life had given him reason to trust them.

*

It was all over the block. No one was supposed to talk about it, make suppositions about it, but all the inmates knew. Fort Leavenworth had been breached. An inmate had been broken out. Some people thought he might have been kidnapped, but given that there had been no ransom demand, a break out seemed far more likely.

Claire put her head down, pretended not to listen to the gossip, to go about her day. She’d managed to score a pretty cushy gig working at the library on the women’s side. Plenty of other women in there with her were college-educated, had been scientists and engineers as well, but for some reason she’d managed to earn the status of super-geek even among the other commissioned (formerly commissioned) officers, and the women turned to her for academic advice.

None of them knew she was in there for what the SGC had portrayed as a betrayal of not just her country but her entire planet (and they couldn’t know about the entire planet part, obviously). Most of them were in there for things unrelated to their military service - theft, assault, drugs, maybe even a murder (and most of the time their husbands had it coming; Claire believed that, had seen what her own father had done to her mother, a woman who seemed incredibly strong to everyone else). They thought she’d been busted for politics (which she had been) over science and a petty disagreement with a male superior. The others liked her. And they trusted her.

So they were pretty free with the gossip around her, asked her what she thought about the big hubbub.

A Marine officer was the escapee, they’d heard. Name of Newman. Anyone who ever knew him was getting the shakedown.

Claire realized who had escaped as soon as a guard approached in the library with a message. Someone wanted a chat with her.

It was Dean who’d been busted out. 

A couple of NID agents - Malcolm Barrett was the only one who introduced himself - questioned her in a visiting room. They wore casual clothes, acted like they were glad to see her, like long-lost friends or relatives. Didn’t want to tip anyone off. Why?

Claire answered their questions readily. She hadn’t had contact with him in...three years? Since their courts martial. As far as she knew, everyone involved in Maybourne’s operation had been apprehended in O’Neill’s sting and ended up in the same place. Leavenworth. Though someone had gone to great lengths to make sure none of them ever saw each other. 

Maybourne had evaded capture, though, hadn’t he? Or escaped? She’d heard that through the grapevine.

Agent Barrett and his baby-faced sidekick thanked her for her time, excused themselves.

Claire returned to the library, to mindlessly shelving books while her mind churned. Had Maybourne broken Dean out? Would anyone be coming for her?

The answer was yes.

Guards came for her in the middle of the night. She was being moved to a newer, more secure location. Scuttlebutt was that Dean had been snatched during a prisoner transfer, so Claire wasn’t surprised that they had triple the normal security on her.

She was surprised that their convoy got hit. Same tactic as last time. Whoever was working with Dean was an idiot. They didn’t succeed. There were shouts all across the radios, smoke, automatic gunfire, the kind of well-coordinated chaos that meant the guards were panicking.

Three guards stayed on her, shifted her to another vehicle in the convoy, drove her to a backup location.

They’d just pulled up outside of the new location - she had no idea where it was or what it was because the window were blacked out - when there was a loud explosion.

Flashbang.

She went down, temporarily blind and deaf.

Smoke filled the air.

Smoke grenades.

There were firm hands on her, hustling her into the building, doors slamming, more people panicking.

And then she was  _ out _ of the building and into fresh air and someone was hustling her along.

“Move, move,  _ move,  _ airman!”

Claire’s vision cleared, and she was being hauled across a lawn by a teenage boy.

Only he was hissing at her with all the brusqueness of a drill sergeant, and he was hauling ass. He opened what looked like a sewer cover, ordered her down it. She hesitated.

_ “Do it, _ Lieutenant!”

She obeyed, the obedience to that tone reflexive.

He climbed after her, settled the cover into place. Down at the bottom of the metal ladder someone had tied a plastic bag to one of the rungs. The boy tore it open, came up with some bolt cutters. He cut the chains on her shackles.

“C’mon. We can get rid of the jewelry at the other end. Got some real clothes for you too.”

“Who  _ are _ you?” Claire asked, but she followed him.

He glanced over his shoulder. “What, I don’t remind you of someone in your old command?”

It took her a second to parse the reference. “...O’Neill? What - what happened to you?”

“The Asgard,” he said.

The Asgard had turned him into a kid?

“That doesn’t explain why you’re breaking me out.”

“Less talking, more running, Lieutenant. You’ll know what you need to know when you know it.” He led her through the tunnels, flashlight in hand, with a certain hurried confidence that she remembered from missions past. He’d memorized a map of the tunnels.

He paused, scanned three possible branches, picked the left, kept on moving. Found a ladder. Climbed up.

They were in some kind of side-alley. There was a car parked nearby. O’Neill - Claire still couldn’t believe it was him - made a beeline for it. He popped the trunk, found some more tools, and set to cutting the shackles off of her. He bundled the shackles into a plastic bag, which he inflated before he dropped back down into the tunnel.

It would float away, she realized. Confuse pursuers about where she’d surfaced. While he worked, Claire poked in the trunk some more, found some clothes in her size. She didn’t hesitate to strip out of her overalls right there and change into them.

O’Neill returned.

“Give me your jumpsuit.” He held out a hand.

“Why?”

He waggled what looked like a prepaid UPS box. “Gonna send them on a wild goose chase.”

“You’re insane,” Claire said, but she handed her overalls over anyway.

O’Neill popped them into the box, sealed it shut, and tossed it into the back seat.

Dean was sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Hey, Claire.”

“Dean.” She slid into the backset.

O’Neill took shotgun.

“What’s going on?” Claire asked.

Dean turned to her, grinned. “Wanna save the world?”

“With  _ him?” _ She lifted her chin at O’Neill.

“He’s not the same as the Old Guy,” Dean said. “The SGC thought the Asgard screwed up when they hit the Xerox machine and O’Neill came out a teenager. But we got the better model. The one who’s willing to do something.”

Xerox machine. Newer model. The teenager was a malfunctioning clone of Jack O’Neill.

Not so malfunctioning that he hadn’t been able to break both Dean  _ and _ Claire out of Leavenworth.

“Fair enough,” Claire said. “I’m still loyal to my country and this planet. How can I help?”

“First, we need information.”

“On?”

“On our first target.”

Claire nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Roll out, Newman,” O’Neill said.

Dean started the engine.

Claire leaned forward, poked her head between the front seats. “So...what should I call you?”

“My name’s Jon. Jon Murray.” He handed her a slim black leather ladies’ wallet. “And you are Nicola Claire Ballard, my cousin. You’re traveling with your brother, Samuel Dean Ballard. We’re on a roadtrip to fulfill our dead grandmother’s dying wish of sprinkling her ashes in various locations around the country.”

Inside the wallet were all the makings of an identity - driver’s license, health insurance card, car insurance card for the car they were driving, a loyalty card for some chain grocery store, even a Blockbuster card. She had cash, a credit card in her fake name, and also a faded photo of her - and her real grandmother.

Claire glanced at Dean. Had he made these?

He shook his head, nodded at Jon.

Jon had made these?

It was so bizarre, to look into his smooth, wide-eyed face and think that he was Jack O’Neill underneath, had all the man’s training and experience. Claire had read SG-1’s mission reports - had read O’Neill’s mission reports - and the man was a legend for a reason.

What happened when a legend got turned into a boy and tossed out on his own?

He kept fighting the good fight however he could.

Claire had never wanted anything more than to protect Earth. Finally, she was going to get to do it.

*

Spencer stepped into the interrogation room with a file in his hands, some of the pages relevant to the current investigation, other pages filler. He had a little paper cup of coffee in hand. 

“Can I get one of those?” Jon asked.

Spencer, about to sit opposite him, paused. “Coffee?”

Jon nodded. “Yeah. The real stuff. Not hot chocolate.”

That wasn’t an unreasonable request, and Spencer wanted to build rapport, so - 

He glanced over his shoulder at the window. “Can I get another cup of coffee? For - Jon. You prefer to be called Jon, right? Or is it Jonathan? Maybe JD?”

“Jon’s fine, Doc,” he said, and he looked amused at Spencer’s babbling.

“Right. Jon. You can call me Spencer, if you want. But - Doc is fine too.” Spencer swallowed hard.

“Fourteen?” Jon asked.

Spencer blinked. “Pardon?”

“Your age when you graduated from high school.”

“Twelve, actually,” Spencer said.

Jon whistled, impressed. “Must have been rough.”

Spencer shrugged. “What about you?”

Jon looked away. “Didn’t graduate from high school. Couldn’t sit still through all of - that.”

“High school’s not for everyone,” Spencer conceded.

“Except for the part where it’s mandatory for everyone sixteen and under. Unless you’re Amish.” Jon met his gaze, smirked. He found this entire situation amusing.

“Were you raised Amish?”

“Haha, no! No. You’re not a shrink, are you? Never liked shrinks. Do you want to talk about my mother? She was a fine lady.”

_ Was. _ Either his mother was dead or she was no longer someone he considered  _ fine. _ According to his file he’d been emancipated.

“You know I’m with the FBI. I want to talk to you about why we found you at the crime scene of Senator Kinsey’s murder.”

Jon spread his hands. “Well, you caught me red-handed, so I think it should be pretty obvious.”

“Are you admitting that you murdered Senator Kinsey?” Spencer made sure he was sitting up straight.

“I’m not admitting a thing.” Again with that smirk.

There was a knock at the door, and JJ came in with a cup of coffee.

Of course Hotch had sent in JJ - young, slender, female, non-threatening. She flashed Jon one of her friendly smiles.

He looked her up and down, found her attractive, dismissed her. Spencer was angry on his teammate’s behalf, but he said nothing. 

“Thanks,” Jon said, accepting the coffee, and took a sip.

So he could drink black-as-mud cop-shop coffee without blinking. Had he had a lot of it before? Did he have a sealed juvenile history?

“What do you know about Senator Kinsey?”

“Bob?” Jon considered. “Other than that he was a smarmy, self-righteous asshole and one real smug sonofabitch? Not much.”

That sounded personal. “So you disliked him.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

JJ cleared her throat. “Anything else you need? To make your stay more comfortable till your lawyer gets here.”

Jon frowned. “I didn’t ask for a lawyer.”

“Well, you’re a minor, and in this state -”

“Right. A minor.” Jon rolled his eyes. “No, thanks. I’m just peachy. For now. I mean, I might get hungry in a bit. You know how teenagers are. Bottomless pits.”

JJ nodded. “All right. If you need anything, just ask.”

“Will do.” Jon dismissed her presence again before she was even out of the room.

Spencer eyed him. “Do you dislike women?”

“I  _ like _ women,” Jon said. He added, some kind of bizarre non-sequitur or inside joke only he understood, “I just have a little problem with scientists.”

“I have PhDs in mathematics, chemistry, and engineering,” Spencer said.

“Three’s pretty good. I knew a guy who had three. Not hard sciences, of course. Knew a guy who had two PhDs - physics and engineering. He always introduced himself as  _ doctor, _ and sometimes he literally said  _ PhD PhD _ after his name, which was...you don’t do that, do you?”

“No,” Spencer said.

“It’s interesting, that they introduce you as  _ Dr. Reid _ instead of  _ Agent Reid. _ A military officer with an advanced degree would be introduced by her rank and not her salutation.” Jon leaned back in his chair, studied Spencer.

Spencer was getting so many mixed signals from Jon - dismissive, but friendly; hostile, but not aggressive; smug and amused, but not overconfident. He wasn’t sure how to get the boy to open up.

Spencer said, “Tell me about the copy toner.”

Jon smiled to himself, spread his hands wide, like he was imagining the black powder staining his fingers. “Wouldn’t make any sense to you, genius though you may be.”

Spencer clasped his hands on the table, leaned in, all the signs of interest. “Try me.”

Jon looked up at him, still amused at the inside joke that the copy toner represented. “Here’s the deal, Doc. I could tell you in brilliant technicolor detail about every single life I’ve ever taken, but it wouldn’t matter an iota, because I’m never seeing the inside of a jail or prison cell.”

Ice clawed its way up Spencer’s spine.

Jon was perfectly confident, his gaze frank, open.

Spencer almost believed him.

“If you really murdered Senator Kinsey, two of his assistants, Colonel Maybourne, and a couple of his former staff officers,” Spencer said, “we will find evidence, and you will go to prison.”

“No,” Jon said softly. “I won’t.” He spread his hands again, showing that the copy toner had been washed off. “You see, who I am -  _ what _ I am is far more important than Bob and Harry and their petty little lives.”

“You don’t have the right to decide that.”

Jon looked almost sad for a moment.

Almost.

He shrugged, perfectly nonchalant. “I didn’t.”

Did Jon believe he had some kind of higher calling, to commit these murders? Before Spencer could ask more, there was a loud knock on the window.

Spencer glanced over his shoulder in the vague direction of his teammates, nodded his acknowledgment. He stood. “Pardon me, Jon. I need to speak to my teammates.”

“’Bye, Doc,” Jon drawled.

Spencer started for the door.

“What, no goodbye kiss? This might be the last time we see each other.”

Spencer couldn’t tell if the come-on was a coming-out or meant to discomfit him. Given how Jon had checked out JJ - he could have been bi. He was more than old enough to know that about himself.

“I’ll be just a moment,” Spencer assured him, refusing to give in to the taunting. He stepped out of the interrogation room.

Standing in the observation room with his teammates was a man in a blue military dress uniform. Air Force. Major, judging by the bronze oak leaves on his shoulders. Paul Davis, his nametag read.

He was gazing at Jon through the window, and he looked - stricken. Horrified. Also fascinated and disgusted.

Jon’s fingerprints matched Colonel O’Neill, United States Air Force. Here was another Air Force officer.

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Gideon was staring at Major Davis, gaze fit to burn. “Reid, the Air Force will be taking this over.”

Davis roused himself to do some diplomacy. “Harry Maybourne was one of ours. Thanks to your team’s hard work, we’ved linked Kinsey’s death to Maybourne’s. We’ll be taking over from here.”

Spencer looked at Hotch. Hotch shook his head very subtly.

Spencer looked back through the mirror at Jon. Jon was looking right back at him, all amusement and sarcasm gone. His gaze was empty, and for a moment he just looked...hollow.

*

Dean wasn’t sure what to think when Claire and Jon stepped into the abandoned warehouse they were using as headquarters. It made sense that they went out on target acquisition runs. Jon kept himself clean-shaven and neatly-groomed, dressed like a middle class suburban high schooler who was on the honor roll, and it made him innocuous. People always underestimated Claire, especially when she grew her hair out longer, wore cute makeup, and dressed like she wanted to be on Sex in the City.

That the two of them came back with what was clearly a body in a duffel bag was alarming.

Detroit was dead, portions of the city abandoned in swathes, and no one would pay attention to their comings and goings - Jon’s car was also innocuous - and no one would hear them while they worked.

“Who is this?”

“A lead on our first target,” Jon said. 

He and Claire set the duffel bag on the ground, unfastened it, wrangled their captive out of it. It was a young man. Judging by his haircut and the ball chain visible at his throat, he was a serviceman.

Dean hadn’t signed on with Jon’s crazy plan to hurt another serviceman. Earth first, Earth always had been Maybourne’s motto. He glanced at Claire. Her expression was grim.

That the man was still unconscious meant he’d either suffered a concussion and was in a minor coma or he’d been drugged. Neither Claire nor Jon looked like they’d been in a scuffle, but that didn’t mean anything.

Jon wrangled the man onto one of the steel worktables that had been left behind, then set about tying him down to the table by each limb. Dean was both intrigued and discomfited by Jon’s easy manipulation of the ropes, the knots he used.

“Boy Scout?” Dean asked, trying to lighten to mood.

Jon shot him a look. “No. Shibari. Was stationed in Japan for a while once upon a time.”

It was too easy to forget that beneath that baby face was a man old enough to be Dean’s father.

“Who is he?”

“He’s going to tell me what I want to know about where our first target is.” Jon glanced at them. “Did you learn enhanced interrogation?”

“Sleep deprivation, time disorientation, psychological warfare with either constant noise or unpredictable bursts of sustained irritating noise,” Claire recited dutifully.

“What did you learn from the SGC?” Jon asked.

“A Goa’uld memory device can be useful,” Dean offered.

Jon opened a toolbox and drew out what looked like a fancy cut glass decanter. “I’m guessing you’ve never heard of this. You were in the slammer long before the SGC encountered Tal’vak acid.”

“Never heard of it.” Claire looked intrigued, but Dean was pretty sure she was swallowing down some horror.

“Favorite of a Goa’uld named Ba’al.” Jon’s tone was terrifyingly casual. “Put a drop on someone’s skin, just a small drop. It’ll take time to burn through, but it cauterizes the wound as it goes. The rough part, of course, is when it reaches the bloodstream and spreads.”

Dean stared at him.

Jon drew another decanter out of the toolbox. “Don’t worry. This will neutralize the acid. We get what we want, we stop the burn.”

“Sir,” Claire said, because she felt better calling him that even though none of them had ranks anymore, and Jon had never really had one to begin with. “Isn’t that - we’re not like that.”

“Not like the Goa’uld?” He glanced up at her, his expression still deceptively mild. “Not stealing advanced tech and using it to forward our own ends?”

“We don’t enslave people.” Claire’s spine went stiff.

“No. But sometimes we have to do damn distasteful things in the name of duty,” Jon said. “Like leaving a man behind enemy lines to rot in a jail to get vital intel home safely.”

There was a certain edge to his words that put Dean on alert. He’d read all of SG-1’s reports that he could get his hands on - which was pretty much all of them - before O’Neill had signed on to Maybourne’s project (kind of), and he’d been given an overview of the man’s training history, skills, and commendations, but he really didn’t know O’Neill, not like he thought he did.

If Jon was willing to use that acid on a man, did  _ anyone _ know what O’Neill was really like?

Or was Jon like that little-girl vampire on Interview With a Vampire, an adult trapped in a kid’s body and crazy because of it?

Claire cleared her throat. “Should we wake him up?”

She wanted to get this over with.

Jon shook his head. “No. I want the drug to clear his system. Can’t risk an adverse reaction with the acid.”

“How long do you think he’ll be out?” Dean asked.

Jon glanced at his watch. “We calculated the dose pretty closely but - you know what, you kids go out, catch a movie, go to the mall, window shop, have some fun. Leave me to do this.”

On the one hand, Dean didn’t want to leave the man alone with Jon. On the other hand, did he want to watch what Jon was going to do? He looked at Claire.

She said, “Sure thing, sir.”

Jon even reached into his billfold and gave her a C-note, like a parent giving money to his kid.

Claire grabbed Dean’s wrist and they left the warehouse.

“We could just go,” Dean said. “Rabbit. He’d never -”

Claire bit her lip. 

“What?”

“We have trackers in us,” she said.

Dean came up short. “What?”

“The kind of trackers that the SGC uses to beam people up.”

“Since when?”

“He did it when we were asleep. Remember for a while there, both of us had colds? He’d wait till the cold medicine knocked us out and -”

Dean tried to think of where a tracker could have been implanted. He hadn’t been cut or bruised recently that he could remember. “How did you find out?”

“When we went to grab Lieutenant Kennedy, I didn’t want to - and then he told me.” Claire looked sick. “Anywhere we go, he can find us. Beam us back.”

_ “Beam _ us?”

“You know he only plays dumb, right? And the SGC - they have plans for Asgard beaming tech. It’s been integrated into our space battlecruisers. Apparently the Old Guy isn’t as creative with his passwords as he thought. When you were going and rounding up weapons and supplies and we were working on modifying some Goa’uld communication spheres? He was also working on the beaming device,” Claire said.

“Could the SGC protect us?” Dean asked.

“They’ll have us executed.”

“Not if we give them intel on Jon.”

Claire darted a glance over her shoulder. “What do we do?”

Dean took a deep breath. “We stick around till we figure out who his main target is, and then - then we tell the SGC.”

“But he never tells us anything.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Dean said, “I promise. Now come on. Let’s go catch a flick. Have a nice dinner. On the old man’s dime.”

Claire nodded, tried to smile.

They had to get out of this mess before it buried them alive.

*

“You’re not really him.” Paul stood opposite the boy and studied him. The boy looked just like the one in childhood pictures of Jack O’Neill that Paul had been shown when he’d been read into the the problem of Duplicate O’Neill.

The FBI’s BAU team had been sent to their war room to wait (not sent away, because they were useful consultants, and also the NID wanted their investigation materials), and some SGC techs had made abundantly sure that none of Davis’s interrogation of the Duplicate would be hacked into or otherwise spied upon by outside sources, including the BAU’s brilliant but rebellious Penelope Garcia.

“I’m not even really a person.”

Paul blinked. “Pardon?”

The Duplicate waggled his hands like jazz hands, his expression pure sarcasm. “I’m just a mistake spat out of a malfunctioning Asgard xerox machine, remember? Carter named me herself. Duplicate O’Neill. Don’t know why everyone is surprised I don’t  _ act _ like a real human being, let alone the one named Jack O’Neill.”

Paul had accepted the SGC’s designation for him without question. Duplicate O’Neill. “What do you prefer to be called?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he drawled.  _ “They _ sent you. You look at me, and all you see is a faded, broken copy, barely a shadow of the original.”

Paul was distinctly unsettled. He’d read O’Neill’s file inside and out, not just his official SRB and the SGC portions of his jacket, but all of it. Combined with what information the NID had managed to scrounge from the FBI servers on the case, he knew the creature opposite him was a monster with a child’s face.

“Still a major, by the way? You’ve been a major the entire time I’ve known you.”

That was was the Duplicate’s way of trying to needle him. Paul did his best to exude calm. “You know how it is. Big Air Force doesn’t know what’s going on at the SGC, doesn’t see eye-to-eye with my CO at the Pentagon. I’m not in it for the silver oak leaves, though. I’m in it to protect this planet and the program.”

“So am I.”

“How was killing Airman Harris and Sergeant Christensen protecting the planet?” Paul asked.

The Duplicate rocked back on the back legs of his chair, the picture of adolescent boredom.

“Don’t make me ask the question again.”

The Duplicate raised his eyebrows, and he looked like an insolent teen and an unimpressed Jack O’Neill all in one. “You think this is a James Bond movie? That I’m going to do a villain monologue for you or something? If you can’t figure out yourself why those people died, you don’t deserve the silver oak leaves you think should be coming your way.”

“I’m not rising to your bait.”

But Paul wasn’t a trained interrogator. He needed a trained interrogator, and the best person to do the job was someone who had intimate knowledge of the murder case. Paul was under no illusions that all of the victims identified by the FBI and attributed to the so-called New Punisher represented the total of the Duplicate’s victims. One of the FBI agents would have to sign an NDA.

Paul had to run it up the chain to the Pentagon and Homeworld Security. They needed to find out just how far the Duplicate’s net had spread, and why.

The Duplicate said, “What can you possibly do to me that’ll make me talk? And won’t make you look like a total monster, because the nice FBI agents think I’m some poor orphaned teen who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and made a foolish choice, touching a corpse before he called the cops.”

That wasn’t the story at all. The FBI had caught the Duplicate with black copy toner on his hands, the same toner left on all of the corpses attributed to the so-called New Punisher. As far as they were concerned, he was guilty.

There would always be doubters and detractors in the press, though, people who always questioned the government’s actions. Torturing a teenager would be reprehensible. If the press even found out. The press had come close to outing the SGC a few times, but never succeeded.

Unfortunately for Paul, the press had picked up on the fact that the Duplicate had been brought in for questioning related to the New Punisher killings. If the Duplicate went missing -

No. The Duplicate had flown strictly under the radar for a reason. No one would miss him, not if the FBI told the press that he’d been released without charges and they were grateful for his assistance with the case.

And then Paul realized - he’d genuinely considered torturing the Duplicate.

The SGC had far better interrogation tech than any human FBI agent could hope to match.

The best thing to do would be to take him back to the SGC and try a Goa’uld mind device on him. Paul wasn’t about to try to transport the Duplicate on his own. He’d need plainclothes SFs to handle him.

“As you pointed out,” Paul said, “you’re not a real person. You don’t have rights. You don’t have a family. No one knows about you. No one will miss you. So either you tell me what I want to know, or I take the knowledge from you.”

The Duplicate let his chair fall forward loudly. He caught Paul’s gaze and held it. “There, see? We’re not so different after all. We both want to protect Earth and the SGC, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to achieve our ends.” He smirked.

Paul retreated out the door, heart pounding. The Duplicate’s laughter followed him. He couldn’t do this alone.

*

Kyle had fought hard, done his best to resist. He’d been through SERE, gone through more advanced courses with the SGC, because being held captive offworld was almost a rite of passage for anyone on a gate team.

He’d never imagined he’d be kidnapped on Earth, by other humans.

He hadn’t known what to think when his captors yanked the black bag off his head and the chief kidnapper was a teenaged boy. A boy who talked like an adult, who the other man and woman deferred to the way they would to a superior officer.

Kyle knew he was dead then. He’d seen their faces. They wouldn’t let him live.

He remembered his training from SERE. There was no way to resist torture. Interrogation, yes. Torture, no. Everyone broke under torture. The best a man could hope to do was hold out long enough that any verifiable intel he provided would be useless after the battlefield changed. If that didn’t work, the next best thing to hope for was getting a quick death.

SERE couldn’t have prepared anyone for what happened after the teenager and his minions strapped Kyle to a steel table.

The pain wasn’t the worst part.

The relief was.

Kyle never knew when it was coming, but he craved it, was addicted to it, wanted it more than anything, and after each brief respite the pain was worse after.

But he started to talk, to tell the teenager what he knew about Codename Beltane. Where he liked to go to get food, how he got his money, what he did for fun, who delivered his pizza, how often he went to the post office to check his mail.

The one thing the teenager never asked was who Codename Beltane really was.

It was during one of those blessed spells of respite that the female minion asked.

“Who is Codename Beltane and why does he matter?”

“Need-to-know,” the teenager sing-songed.

“If we’re going to help you capture him, we need to know, so we know what defensive and evasion tactics he might employ,” the male minion said.

Even though they’d all showed Kyle their faces, they’d been so, so careful not to reveal their names to him.

“Nope,” the teenager said. “I’m going to go bag and tag him while you dump this body and get us ready to move.”

“Move?” the woman asked.

“Our next target is nowhere near here.”

The man huffed. “If you can bag and tag the target by yourself, why do you even need us?”

“You mean why don’t I just let you go?” The teenager’s voice was dangerously pleasant.

Neither the man nor the woman answered.

“Go,” the teenager said. “If you want.”

“You know we can’t,” the woman said.

“Do I? You’ve both got legs, don’t you? You can walk right on out of here, if you want. I mean, if you get caught, it’ll just be back to Leavenworth with you. Not much different than before.”

“Who says we’ll get caught?” the man asked.

“He’ll turn us into the SGC. He can hack into them whenever he wants.” The woman sounded tired, resigned.

The man growled. “Is this all just a game to you?”

“Yes,” the teenager said. “A huge game, with the fate of the Earth and the galaxy as the grand prize.”

Kyle said, “Why do you want Colonel Maybourne?”

_ “Maybourne?” _ the man and woman demanded at the same time.

“Because,” the teenager said flatly, “he’s a threat to the SGC’s security and integrity. And he left me to rot in an Iraqi prison for six months when he was supposed to have my back. Two birds, one stone.”

The man’s voice shook. “This is all about revenge.”

“Revenge against those who’d threaten the peace and security of our planet and galaxy,” the teenager said.

What did a teenager know about the SGC?

“Thanks for letting the cat out of the bag, Sergeant Brownell,” the teenager said. “But you gave me what I wanted, so - lights out.”

The last thing Kyle heard was a gunshot.

*

Derek scrubbed a hand over his face. “We’ve got military personnel from different branches of service, their connections unclear; a senator and his aide; a computer programmer and some former military personnel who were all most recently on the radar as a reporter and camera crew; and some corporate bigwigs. What do all of these people have in common?”

He and the rest of the team were sitting around the conference table in the War Room, trying not to fume about the Air Force taking over their investigation. 

“A black hole,” Penelope said. She was on speakerphone.

Gideon’s expression was contemplative. “Seems like an apt metaphor.”

“Share with the class?” Derek asked.

Reid went to sip his coffee, realized his mug was empty, frowned. “I’m guessing what Garcia means is that there is no connection, but a certain absence of something between all of them is indicative of a connection. Like when scientists cannot perceive a black hole, but the movement of celestial bodies in relation to each other indicates that a black hole is present.”

“Gold star to my genius boy,” Penelope said.

“What is the black hole?” Hotch asked. He refilled Reid’s mug, then set the coffee machine to brewing another pot.

“I’m not sure,” Penelope said. “But it’s there. Colonel Robert Makepeace was assigned to Deep Space Telemetry in Colorado Springs, out of Cheyenne Mountain.”

“NORAD,” Reid said wisely.

Gideon nodded.

“Colonel Harold Maybourne was a senior official with the National Intelligence Division.”

Hotch frowned. “I’ve never heard of that division.”

“Sergeant Kyle Brownell was stationed at Quantico. Lieutenant Lucas Kennedy was a staff officer at the Pentagon,” Penelope continued. “One time Lieutenant Kennedy and Colonel Maybourne were at a security briefing at the Pentagon together. That was four years ago.”

“Four years?” Derek sat up straighter. “Jon Murray would have been all of twelve years old.”

“Colonel Maybourne and Colonel Jack O’Neill were on some kind of joint operation in the Gulf in December of 1990,” Penelope said.

“When Jon Murray was all of one year old.” Reid shook his head.

“Of course, Colonel O’Neill was accused of trying to murder Senator Kinsey. Alice Sutherland wasn’t Kinsey’s aide at the time of the assassination attempt.” Penelope paused, hummed thoughtfully.

Before she could say anything further, JJ stepped into the War Room. Her expression was grim.

“I spent about half an hour on the phone with Agent Malcolm Barrett of the NID. The Air Force isn’t budging on this one. They want all of our case files and notes. They’re transporting Jonathan Murray to a secure military facility for further questioning.”

“He’s just a boy,” Derek protested. 

“Whatever he knows, it’s related to national security.” JJ shrugged helplessly.

Derek snorted. “Of course it is.”

Gideon stood up. “Is there any chance I could talk to Jon one last time? Before they take him. I’ll make it fast.”

“I can ask,” JJ said.

“Please do.” Gideon nodded.

JJ ducked out of the room. She reappeared a few moments later with Major Davis in tow. Major Davis had his cover tucked against his side and looked pale and grim as well.

And afraid. Something about Jon Murray had this seasoned Air Force officer and politician downright spooked.

“I promise not to ask about anything top secret,” Gideon said. “I just want to ask Jon one thing, about his signature.”

Major Davis looked confused. “His signature?”

“His specific calling card he left at every crime scene,” Reid translated. 

“For scientific benefit, mostly,” Gideon said. His expression was deceptively nonchalant.

Major Davis’s gaze went distant while he considered. Finally, he said, “It’ll be a bit before SF’s get here to transport him. If you think he’ll talk to you, sure, give it a shot. For science.”

Reid cleared his throat. “Do you want me to do it? Since we had some measure of rapport before.” Before Major Davis showed up and ruined a perfectly good interrogation.

“I’ll do it,” Gideon said.

“Can we observe?” Derek asked. “Gideon’s much more experienced and skilled in this area.”

Major Davis looked wary for a moment, but then he nodded. He guided Gideon into the interrogation room.

Derek, Hotch, Reid, and JJ stayed in the observation room.

Jon had been balancing on the back legs of his chair, hanging onto the edge of the table and swinging idly. When Gideon entered, just like with Reid, Jon let his chair drop loudly.

“Agent Gideon,” he said. “Come to rescue me from Major Davis’s nefarious interrogation plans?”

He was scared, Derek thought.

Gideon shook his head. “No. That’s not possible. I just want to know, for my own professional curiosity - why the copy toner?”

Jon flicked at glance at Major Davis. “Inside joke.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“That’s not possible.”

“That’s a shame.” Gideon shook his head. “It’s a signature I’ve never seen before. It would be instructive, to future investigative teams, to understand the logic behind it, but without an explanation, it’s an oddity, nothing more.”

Jon said, “We can’t always get what we want. Davis understands what it means. Don’t you, Paul?”

Major Davis started, surprised.

Jon rolled his eyes. “And they say I play dumb. Carter would get it. Someone pressed the wrong button on the Xerox machine, remember?” He leaned in, gaze suddenly fervent. He was speaking to Davis and only to Davis.

“Remember the time I told Harry I’d rather be a thief and alive than honest and dead? I was lying then. But the principle holds true. Of course, I’m not really alive, so it doesn’t matter if I’m a thief or honest. I’m not a person. I don’t matter. Except now I do. What I’ve done matters. Put me through the shredder, but I’ll still matter. I did this for us, for Danny and Sammy and Murray. I did it for  _ you.” _

Major Davis said, “I thought you weren’t going to do the villain monologue.”

Jon smiled at him. “What makes you think I’m the villain?”

*

Killing Robert Kinsey was the coup de grace. He’d tried to shut down funding for the Stargate Program. He wanted to be President of the United States. He represented bigotry and ignorance and greed. He was a Goa’uld without the snake.

Jon leaned against Kinsey’s heavy wooden desk and waited for the man to wear himself out. Jon had sedated him, bound him to his heavy desk chair, and waited for him to wake up.

As soon as he’d woken up, Newman had said, “What now?”

Jon shot him in the face. He shot Tobias before she could scream.

Kinsey had been too dazed to scream, hot blood and brain matter splashed across his face and bespoke suit. 

And then his fight or flight response kicked in (the first response was always, always freeze, though training could cut freeze time down considerably), and he started to curse and struggle against his bonds.

So Jon leaned back against the desk and waited.

When Kinsey finally wore himself out, Jon said, “Bob.”

“Who the  _ hell _ are you?” Kinsey spat, trying for angry but still clearly terrified.

“I thought you were all up on the happenings at the SGC, always poking your nose in where it isn’t wanted.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Jon chuckled. “Cute, pretending you don’t know about the Stargate Program, even though you’ve always tried to use it for your own ends, either trying to gut its funding or look like you support it in hopes of gaining political capital.”

“I won’t tell you anything.”

“I’m not here to dig up info on the SGC. I know more about it than you do. Been there since day one, after all.” Jon nodded at the two corpses cooling on the carpet. “You don’t recognize Major Dean Newman and Lieutenant Claire Tobias, who were part of Harry Maybourne’s side project, his own mini-SGC stealing Asgard and other alien tech from Earth’s allies for Earth’s sole benefit? And for money, of course.”

Kinsey glanced down at the bodies and started to hyperventilate.

“Here’s the thing about you politicians - you’re always talking about things you don’t understand.” Jon straightened up. “You’ve never been through the gate. You’ve never been in combat. You’ve never looked your own death in the face and had to come up with a quippy comeback really fast, because as it turns out, death has a pretty lousy fashion sense most of the time. So for you to think you understand the threat better than someone who’s been boots on the ground - well, it’s kind of arrogant, isn’t it?”

“Who  _ are _ you?” Kinsey asked.

“Me? I’m nobody, but you can call me Jon.” He crossed the office, stepping over the bodies, and stood over Kinsey, not quite close enough for the man to reach him should he somehow manage to get a limb free. “Did you ever read the mission report about the time Daniel got himself married to an alien princess and she kept putting him in a sarcophagus and he went a little nuts?”

“Jon, whoever you are, you shouldn’t know any of this. If the Air Force finds out -”

“The Air Force knows all about me. Tries damned hard not to think about me, but they know that I know, well, everything. About the SGC. From blue jello being Teal’c’s favorite to Carter’s father being a Tok’ra to Daniel’s dead wife having been unwilling host to a Goa’uld.” Jon smiled and let Kinsey digest that.

“What do you want from me?” Kinsey asked finally.

“I want you dead,” Jon said.

“Then why am I still alive.”

“Well, I like to take my time, make sure a job is done right.” Jon picked up his toolbox, set it on the desk, flipped it open. “Before my story was rudely interrupted, I was telling you about the time Daniel, SG-1’s eternal damsel in distress, was placed in a sarcophagus multiple times and it - changed him. Made him kinda evil. Like a baby Goa’uld.”

Kinsey nodded.

“Did you know that Jack O’Neill was put into sarcophagus at least twice as many times as Daniel was? When he was held captive offworld by Ba’al after a Tok’ra experiment gone wrong.”

“I’d heard something to that effect.” Kinsey was regaining some confidence. Idiot.

“Did you know that he was tortured between each placement in the sarcophagus? Pretty brutally.”

“I wasn’t clear on the details,” Kinsey said stiffly.

“Well, one detail that got left out of all the official reports is that Ascended Daniel paid him a little visit. Kept him company. Couldn’t interfere, because that would get him kicked out of the Oma Desala fan club. But he offered to be Jack’s Oma, help him Ascend. Because he was worried about Jack’s soul. Jack wanted the easy way out. Daniel said Jack was a better man than that. Jack said Daniel was wrong.” Jon laid the vials of acid and neutralizer on the desk, some pliers, jumper cables, sponges, scalpels, bamboo skewers beside them.

Kinsey’s breath hitched.

“If Daniel went a little nutzo after half as many naps in the box and a lot less torture, how do you think Jack turned out?” Jon glanced over his shoulder at Kinsey. “Think about all the times you’ve gotten in Jack’s face since then and come out alive. You’re lucky.”

“You talk like you know Jack.”

“I know Jack better than anyone else in the universe. Better than his ex-wife, his mother, his father, his closest friends.” Jon considered his tools for a long moment, then scooped up a scalpel. He turned to Kinsey. “Better than any one person should know another, really. And I’m like him, in a lot of ways. Pretty sure I’m missing an essential component, though.”

“A conscience?”

“Pretty much.”

Kinsey took a deep breath. “You’re just a kid. You’re - what, fifteen? Sixteen? You can get help. You still have a chance.”

Jon raised his eyebrows. “You did see me shoot those two, right?”

Kinsey shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.

“Mark the day, a politician without words.” Jon moved to stand behind Kinsey, considering. Somewhere to cut that would cause pain but not disable - not yet. 

Kinsey started to struggle again. “What are you doing back there?”

“Whatever I want,” Jon said, and pressed the blade to Kinsey’s skin.

*

“I’ve been thinking about the Jon Murray case.”

Aaron glanced up from his computer. Reid stood in the doorway of his office. “What about it?”

“The Air Force seemed pretty sure that he committed all those murders - or at least had significant intel on them,” Reid said. “Gideon was sure that Murray wasn’t the killer, though, because - it was impossible. He was too young. There is literally no way Murray could have gained the knowledge and experience to kill like the unsub did, not even if he’d started killing as soon as he was old enough to walk. Techniques from Vietnam, the Gulf, newer techniques with designer acids - it’s just not possible for someone that young to have that level of competence in that variety of killing and torture methods.”

He had his hands in his pockets, brow furrowed as he stared at the carpet.

Aaron said, “Except what if he could, if he were a genius like you.”

Reid lifted his head sharply.

“I watched your interrogation session with him.” Aaron set his computer to screensaver, focused on Reid. “You’re the closest in age to him, and he seemed to know things about you - like you graduating from high school at an incredibly young age. You did manage to establish some rapport with him, and he got under your skin.”

“Maybe,” Reid said. “But I was thinking - Major Newman and Lieutenant Tobias. They were found dead, shot point blank, in Kinsey’s office. Compared to the other crime scenes, that one was a veritable slaughterhouse. They’d been broken out of Leavenworth at different times but pretty early on in the unsub’s spree. What if they were helping Murray, like his assistants and mentors, and Kinsey was the target all along? And once the unsub got to Kinsey, they were no longer necessary, so he got rid of them.”

“It’s not a bad theory,” Aaron said. “But Reid - let it go. It’s not our case anymore.”

“Right.” Reid ducked his head, blushing. “I just - don’t like unsolved puzzles.”

“There are plenty of puzzles you won’t solve in your lifetime, as brilliant as you sure. The more important skill is being able to let them go,” Aaron said.

Reid nodded. “Right. Good night, Hotch. Say hi to Haley for me.”

Aaron smiled. “Good night, Reid.”

Reid ducked out of the office, and Aaron finished off his paperwork.

Then he gathered up his briefcase and jacket and headed home. On the drive, he unknotted his tie, turned on some relaxing music, and left his work behind him. That weekend, he was just Aaron, happy husband with a lovely home and a beautiful wife.

He accompanied Haley to the hardware store so they could pick up some home improvement supplies. He was eager to work with his hands. He needed a bucket, a new pair of pliers, some wire cutters, some -

“This is what you’re looking for.” A stranger held out a pair of red-handled nippers.

“Thanks,” Aaron said automatically, and then he really  _ looked _ at the person standing in the tool aisle beside him.

Jonathan Murray.

“Good luck with your DIY project.” Murray winked, scooped up a pair of nippers for himself, and then walked away. He was carrying, in addition to the nippers, a roll of duct tape and a container of copy toner.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from some of Jack's final words to Jon at the end of Fragile Balance.


End file.
